Garden Trauma.

9-16-17 SHORT HILLS: I have been busy clearing the foundation plants away from the foundation to allow the painters access to the shingles for sanding and then priming and painting. I think it’s better to do a controlled trimming then letting them just trample the shrubs, but by the time they make four trips around the house, everything will be a mess.

 Hopefully the plants will recover with a good growing season. I also pulled up the fences that keep the dogs out of the beds. They were entangled with the ground covers, ivy and pachysandra and lamium. I would almost rather let the house paint just peel away than do all this trauma to the gardens.

 I saw ‘Mother’ last night, Judy didn’t want to go. It’s a mash up of bible stories set in the present and mixed together with quite dramatic crowd scenes and riots. Jennifer Lawrence does an Oscar-worthy job. The other principals were all excellent as well.

 Tomorrow we go to Iceland.

 New blooms: abelia.


The roses keep coming out.

The other crape myrtle, this one's in red and flanked by two smaller crape myrtles planted last fall. The fences are to keep the dogs from digging up the the soft dirt and to keep the lawn mowers from over zealous trimming.

Crape Myrtles Arrive.

9-11-17 SHORT HILLS: I don’t know if climate change affects the frequency of hurricanes, but it just seems logical that hotter water has more energy, is less viscous, evaporates more easily, and hotter air also has more energy and certainly holds more water vapor, all of which make storms more intense.

The weather here is lovely, warm afternoons and cool nights. I have continues to do pruning and weeding and trimming. Now I am working on the foundation plantings to prep for the painters, who arrive in a few weeks. I removed a lot of bamboo stalks from the sunroom area, some dead, some too close to the house. First I cut them down and then cut them up to fit into the cars for dump runs. Judy was a huge help dragging them out to the driveway, and then driving them to the dump when I filled a car with the cut up stalks. There were four carloads. That was the biggest job of the painting prep, so far.

We planted two crape myrtle trees, Lagerstroemia muskogee, crepe is also acceptable if you want to go français. Actually the guys from the Farm planted them as they were good sized with big root balls. They’re each about six feet tall, one pink and one red flowering.

Our ash trees are already showing fall color and beginning to drop leaves, and one sugar maple on our street has some orange. I don’t know if this means an early foliage season or not, but hints at that. The ash are the last trees to leaf out in the spring and the first to dump in the fall. Could one say that they are the most deciduous?


Crape myrtle flower cluster with many buds yet to open. Each cluster of stamens and styluses is surrounded by six crinkled petals. If you look closely at the buds, you can see that they are hexagonal.

Maizie likes this one best. It's about six feet tall.

Ash trees are already turning...

And so is this sugar maple.

Another crape myrtle flower getting a visit from Mr. Bumble.

Now Painting Scheduled.

9-8-17 SHORT HILLS: We had a nice rain two days ago, I think it was the remnant of hurricane Harvey. The new roof apparently worked well. The roofers were supposed to come back today to finish the interior work under the new skylights, but they canceled. I used to have a rule—never pay in full until the job is completely finished—which I failed to follow.

I have continued weeding and pruning in the yard. There’s always something else to do. The house will be painted in a few weeks, and I will have to trim the foundation plants for the workers access to sand and then paint.

The indoor plants have come back inside after their summer vacations outside. The Autumnal Equinox is two weeks away.


Butterfly weed, Asclepias tuberosa, has plenty of buds yet to open.

Caryopteris is drawing lots of bumblebees.

Butterfly bush sans butterflies.

The new roof and peeling paint. The new color will be a slightly lighter gray.

Brooklyn Heights.

9-3-17 SHORT HILLS: We spent yesterday afternoon in Brooklyn Heights at the waterfront park. I have mentioned the park before—aging, dilapidated, unused piers have been turned into a huge recreational area. There are green spaces, ball courts, walkways, bikeways, playgrounds, BBQ facilities, kayak and sailboat rentals, fishing, restaurants, ferries to Manhattan and other destinations, harbor cruises. It’s all underneath the Brooklyn Bridge and in sight of lower Manhattan, the Statue of Liberty and Ellis Island.

We visited Val and Steve and met Alison and Dan at the River Café for an excellent lunch and post-prandial walk. We watched all the river traffic while we ate. Judy and I headed back to NJ just as the rain started.

New blooms: hostas are managing a few flowers even though they have been eaten.


East River between Brooklyn Heights and lower Manhattan.

Lots of green spaces still being added, one more pier is being converted to another park.

Kayak instruction, sailing, fishing and venues for all the 'ball' sports. The Statue is on the horizon to the left. That big orange ship is the Staten Island ferry.

Black duck or mallard?

More ducks, these look more like mallards.

Roofing.

8-31-17 SHORT HILLS: This will be a first—a no pix post. Unlike Texas, the weather has been pleasant here, but I guess we’ll get the remnants of Harvey this weekend.

We are in the midst of getting a new roof, and if they finish Friday as scheduled, we’ll stay dry. Actually there was rotted wood roofing, under the shingles, that has been replaced, but one spot was so bad that a roofer put his foot right through the roof and ceiling of the sunroom. They will repair that tomorrow.

I have been out in the yard trimming, weeding and pruning, but there’s lots more to do. Also I planted six butterfly weed, Asclepias tuberosa, and another butterfly bush, Buddleia davidii nanho blue, in the area where the big ash tree came down two years ago.

Judy and I went to the Farm in Chatham Township, a huge nursery, and bought two large crepe myrtles, that they will deliver and plant, probably next week.

Pleasant Dry Weather.

8-28-17 SHORT HILLS: The weather has been channeling the September that will arrive next week. The afternoons are in the seventies and dry, while the nights are in the fifties.

I have done a little pruning and weeding, tested and repaired the sprinklers. They always get problems with clogs in the nozzles, and plant growth often interferes with the back-and-forth movement.


The other color of Rose-of-Sharon.

Clematis. I forgot to mention this as in bloom in the last post.

Hydrangea flowers last a long time on the plant, subtly change color and dry very nicely.

Eastern Tiger Swallowtail on a butterfly bush. Photo from my iPhone is of marginal quality.

Back in NJ.

8-23-17 SHORT HILLS: Yes, we’re back in NJ a bit earlier than planned so Judy can get some dental work she’s been looking forward to. She came down a day before me, while I closed up in VT. When I got here yesterday, it was 90° but felt like a 100° because of the high humidity. After last night’s T-storm, it’s pleasant today and in the seventies.

Much weeding needs to be done.

Most of the trees and shrubs look OK, but there are many brownish and curled up leaves. Cicada make a nighttime racket. Some shrubs have been nibbled on by deer, I suppose, and all the hostas and lily turf were eaten by someone.

In bloom: caryopteris, hydrangea, roses, rose-of-Sharon, plumbago, white snakeroot, butterfly bush, red spirea and forsythia have a couple flowers each.


Rose-of-Sharon also comes in a mauve. I'll try to post one of those next time.

Caryopteris is a smallish shrub with late-season blue flowers that may last into November. Here it's adorned by Hobomok Skipper.

Plumbago is another fall bloomer with vivid blue flowers, about three inches tall.

White Snakeroot grows everywhere in the yard. Is it a weed or a wildflower?

Here's another pic of the Skipper. Like most of the skippers, [s]he's about an inch long.